In the long road African-Americans have tread-and are still walking-from emancipation toward the complete realization of true racial equality, Marcus Garvey stands out in his early and unequivocal declaration of black rights and pride. In the early 1900s he offered a novel approach: full separation and independence from whites, economically and socially. Although a polarizing figure for his sometimes violent and controversial anti-Semitic views and actions, and his relationship with the Ku Klux Klan, his influence for promoting a sense of pride and identity for Africans and the African diaspora spread long and deep-as did his complete and eloquent rejection of white supremacy and its standards.

Ta-Nehisi Coates called Garvey the "patron saint" of the Black Nationalist movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. said Garvey was "the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny. And make the Negro feel he was somebody." In Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Garvey shares his views on the subjects of poverty, race assimilation, religion, the back-to-Africa movement, and on his contemporaries, such as W. E. B. DeBois. He urges African-Americans to "Be as proud of your race today as our fathers were in the days of yore. We have a beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world." As Garvey points out in his writings, history demonstrates that never has "a slave race living in the same country . . . ever yet ruled and governed the masters." Highly rated by reviewers, it is a stirring and essential read for all students of African-American history and identity.

This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a paperback (ISBN 1635618703).